Comparison on the noise and jitter characteristics of harmonic injection-locked and mode-locked erbium-doped fiber lasers

Abstract

We compare the noise characteristics of optical pulses generated from an actively mode-locked (AML) erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) with a semiconductor optical amplifier and an injection-locked EDFL with a gain-switched Fabry-Perot laser diode (FPLD). The mode-locked EDFL pulse exhibits a phase noise of -110.1 dBc/Hz (at 1 MHz offset frequencies from the carrier), the timing jitter of 1.16 ps, and a supermode noise suppression ratio of 47.5 dB. The injection-locked EDFL pulse exhibits a phase noise of -121.1 dBc/Hz (at 1 MHz offset frequencies from the carrier), a timing jitter of 0.31 ps, and a supermode noise suppression ratio of 51 dB. It is demonstrated that the injection-locked EDFL with a gain-switched FPLD has lower noise characteristics than the AML-EDFL.